Saturday, September 20, 2008

Woolgathering Weekend!

After a very long week at work, it was finally time for the Woolgathering in Yellow Springs - an annual fiber festival, and one of my favorite times of the year! I went with Emily and we saw nearly everyone there in the world that we knew! Our friend Catherine made everyone these nifty buttons and she gave them to us as she saw us! Cool! The weather was great, the people were friendly, it was busy, but not too crowded to be able to look at what you wanted to look at, and the yarn selection was great! I got lots of great stuff, and although I had a list I wasn't nearly as focused as Emily, who checked off almost every project on her list (and these were sweater quantity things!) I did get mostly stuff that I have a plan for, but apparently I'm also pretty open to the most minor justification - like Emily saying "oh, you'll think of something". Damn right I will. someday. That's how I ended up with this skein of fantastic yellow sport weight cotton from Creatively Dyed Yarn. I love it! I also picked up a skein of 100% Llama just because I don't have any llama and I felt that I should round out my stash's fiber content! It's a deep grey - the whole section of this was undyed natural colors, I believe. I'm thinking mittens or a cowl, but who knows! it's 240 yards and fantastically soft - any suggestions? I also picked up a hank of hand dyed DK weight alpaca - it's a lovely blue green that doesn't really come out quite right in the pictures. I hate to admit it, but I'm also thinking maybe a cowl for this (I'm using cowls as a justification for everything I pick up lately!) Then I got a single skein of this bulky alpaca - it's really heavy and fantastic and I wish they'd had more skeins of each color because I kind of wanted to splurge on a sweater quantity ( I was thinking of the Abbess Pullover) This will be a cowl maybe for work ( I know, I know!) because I'll definitely want something warmy for cold days, but I'm worried that it'll get dirty or absorb the smells like everything else I wear does! I suppose that's what the wool wash is for, and I shouldn't worry about it. Finally, I got one ball of this Alpaca Yarn Company Joya - just because it was so loopy and made me think of one of those Russian hats. It'll probably sit next to the ball of similarly loopy Garnstudio yarn I haven't done anything yet. after owning it for years. My intention was to buy some local handspun, but it seems like I ended up with more handyed. Still, I did better than usual by getting less commercial yarn.

Oh, there were also tons of weavers there but I was not allowed to look at any of them, and when I did I got a stern talkin' to by Emily. I don't understand why everyone is against me weaving. Seriously, no one I know has thought it was even a slightly ok idea. It isn't like I'm going to quit knitting or that I'll have to sink tons of money into an entirely different group of hobby supplies. It's starting to feel like one of those situations where everyone tells you that the guy's no good for you, but you don't agree, so you cling to him even more. Weaving is my bad boy. But seriously, he's really sweet and it's just that no one else really understands him like I do!

In addition to all the shopping, we saw lots of sheep and goats and alpacas and, as always, the duck herding dog (which I took a little video of, but Blogger isn't wanting to upload it apparently)

Then, because the Woolgathering is at Youngs Jersey Dairy and they're kind of famous for ice cream, we got some ice cream - cinnamon for Emily and a Pumpkin Bumpkin for me (it was a shake made with real pumpkin pie and french vanilla ice cream - mmmm!) THEN she took me to Ashley's bakery in Oakwood which is just around the corner from where she grew up. Because it's apple season, that means it's apple dumpling season so she said we had to get one! I'm saving mine to split with Billy, unless I change my mind before he gets home from work and eat the whole thing then pretend like it never existed! She also got me a couple of their famous cookies - I can't remember the clever name now, but it was a thin chewy molasses spice cookie with a poof of meringue in the middle and deeelicious! They also have fantastic salt sticks (rye bread sticks with grainy salt on the outside!) which I had to get and eat half of. So today my super nutritious food intake has consisted of an apple with coffee for breakfast, a granola bar to keep me from passing out while shopping (it was the South Beach kind which Emily is always raving about and there are pretty damn good!), then a milkshake (which, I remind you, was not just pie flavored, but actually had pie IN it!) then a cookie, then half a breadstick (which I intend to finish when I post this!) Not really going in a good direction today! Oh well - it's the Woolgathering weekend and that's reason enough to celebrate!

4 comments:

"hannah" seems to think you have excess stash... clearly you do not, seeing as you just tossed it and know exactly what's in there!they're called sandtarts, and if you think your day of eating was bad, well, we walked to coco's for dinner and split a bottle of wine, some fantastic (VEGETARIAN!) appetizer that they call "balsamic bleu frites" which was fries with balsamic and bleu cheese, tomatoes, and scallions, followed by bread that I won't even tell you about, followed by a salad with honey-balsamic and bleu cheese crumbles, followed by steak and potatoes... we were stuffed, and COMPLETELY ruined my diet!